Every Wednesday for many months we’ve run a graphic inside the A section tracking military deaths in the Iraq war.  Today, there’s no graphic to be found.

A regular reader and critic of the paper wondered if the omission carried an editorial message. “Aren’t there enough deaths for your staff to gloat any more?”

In truth, the graphic didn’t appear through human error on our part. The graphic artist who usually updates the chart is on vacation this week.  That person’s backup forgot to do it. The night news editor also is off this week, and his backup overlooked the missing chart.  The person designing the news pages inside the A section and our copy editors who check page proofs also failed to note the omission.

We’ll have a note on A2 and run the graphic in Thursday’s Post-Dispatch.